Data communication networks and “network pages” (see DEFINITIONS section) are known. One example of such a network is the internet, which facilitates service of network pages in the form of web pages. On the internet, web pages are “served” by server computers over the internet, to various client computers, responsive to requests made by users (see DEFINITIONS section). Entities that control and manage web page(s) are often interested in how often that entity's web pages are accessed and in who accesses the web page(s).
Web traffic is the amount of data sent/received by visitors to a given web site. Web traffic is generally determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and to identify trends. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to: (i) help structure sites; (ii) highlight security problems; and/or (iii) indicate a potential lack of bandwidth. For most web sites, not all data collected on web traffic can be considered to be meaningful for purposes of web analytics. Web analytics is the measurement of the behavior of website visitors. In commercial contexts, web analytics primarily refers to the measurement of which aspects of the website work towards business objectives. Web traffic is conventionally analyzed by using the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically generated list of all the pages served. A hit is usually generated when any file is served. The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files, thus a page with 6 images could generate 7 hits, specifically the 6 images and the web page itself. A page view is usually generated when a visitor requests a page within the web site. A visitor will usually generate at least one page view (the main page), but could generate many more. Tracking applications external to the web site can record traffic, usually by inserting a small piece of HTML code in every page of the web site.
Other examples of how not all automated web traffic measures obtain meaningful results as described as follows. Web traffic based on web pages served to bots may be filtered out of web traffic statistics so that analysts can focus on human users (see DEFINITIONS section) who access the web page. In addition, search engine operation (normal operations, new operations, abnormal operations, etc.) may cause false or misleading web traffic statistics.